The Art of Being Supportive
by shipperjunkie
Summary: Elena performs a bed check in the middle of the night. She's crazy and amplified. Good thing Damon's so naturally patient and supportive. Right? Adult. A sequel of sorts to 'Next Time and the Time After That' but can be read as a stand-alone story.


Curled on his side, Damon woke slowly, his mind drifting drowsily toward consciousness as he gradually became aware of his surroundings. There was a woman in his bed, which was somewhat alarming considering he'd gone to bed alone, and she was trying to stealthily slide her arm underneath his pillow. He figured that was probably what woke him. That, or the whisper of her breath against the back of his neck. _Elena_, he thought, his brain supplying him with information his body already knew.

He was still fairly lit from the bottles of bourbon he'd shared with Meredith earlier that evening at the Grill, otherwise he would have been awake and alert the moment she'd opened his bedroom door. As quietly as she moved these days, Elena wouldn't have been able to cross the room without his knowledge. And judging from the feel of her warm body as she settled against him, she'd stopped long enough to strip down to the skin before stealing under the covers. He wondered, somewhat fuzzily, if her clothes were strewn about his room or if she'd left them in a somewhat tidy pile beside the bed.

"Thought you were staying at your house tonight," he said, voice rough with sleep. "What time is it?"

Elena shifted slightly, likely to see the clock on his nightstand over his shoulder, then her head returned to the pillow. "A little after three," she answered. Her hand skimmed down his side, over his hip and back up again, slipping around to rub slow circles over his belly. "I couldn't sleep."

"So you drove across town in the middle of the night?"

Elena nuzzled the tip of her cold nose against his shoulder. "Ran through the woods."

Damon reached for the bedside lamp and switched it on, low light spilling over the room. "Why couldn't you sleep, Elena? What's wrong?"

Her silence stretched so long that he thought she wouldn't answer. When she did speak, her voice was soft. "Jeremy brought Matt home with him after work. They . . . may have mentioned seeing you at the Grill."

Ah. "With Meredith."

"Yes," she agreed. "With Meredith."

"And so you . . . what, laid in your bed and stewed in your amplified emo juices until you couldn't stand it any longer?"

Elena blew out a sigh. "I thought . . . okay, it was dumb of me. You don't have to sound so smug."

"Have you met me? You ran through the fucking woods to do a bed check. Here I am, you idiot." A little drunk, half awake, fully hard, Damon caught her roaming hand and tugged it toward his erection.

Her fingers circled him loosely, teasingly, exploring him with a maddeningly light touch from base to tip. As far as Damon was concerned, she could do a pop-in whenever the hell she felt like it. Her thumb swept across the head, back and forth and back again, and he began sobering up swiftly as she trailed open-mouthed kisses up the side of his neck.

"I'm going to bite you," she breathed into his ear, and she wasn't asking permission. The whispered warning caused his cock to twitch in her grasp and Damon's low groan was involuntary, very nearly a growl. His hips shifted restlessly and he wrapped his hand around her fingers, tightening her hold on him, and he taught her how he liked to be touched as they stroked his shaft together.

As experienced as he was, it still took Damon a moment or two to think around the pleasure coursing through his entire body. It was another moment before he could gather wits enough to speak. "Are you going to lose your shit again?"

In the week they'd been sleeping together, he and Elena had managed to stick to the agreement made in the aftermath of their first, disastrous time together – they kept their fangs to themselves. Elena was a blood-bag-only vampire, months old, and she still wrestled with finding alternatives to feeding on people that would satisfy her cravings.

When he'd bitten her during sex, briefly, because he couldn't not bite her, she'd immediately responded in kind. Damon had gone off like a rocket on the Fourth of July but Elena hadn't been so lucky. Bloodlust had promptly short-circuited her brain and she'd lost her orgasm entirely, derailed by the sensation of feeding from something other than a pre-packaged source.

So he figured it was a fair question.

"Only one way to find out," she answered.

Damon arched his neck in response, effectively and silently baring his throat. Her hand squeezed his cock reflexively in her excitement, a shade harder than he normally preferred, and then she let go to shift higher behind him in bed. Her arm wound tightly around his chest and Damon gritted his teeth in sheer anticipation as her breath ghosted over his skin.

The sharp, stinging pierce of her fangs was swift and deep, an aching painful pleasure that sent his senses reeling.

Damon stroked himself with one hand, picking right up where she'd left off. With the other he reached up and grasped the back of her head, his fingers tangling in the silken strands as she drank from him.

She was more in control of herself than he'd expected her to be, the draw smoother, slower and deeper.

And unlike last time, her bite felt more like possession than mere bloodlust.

He pulled her off him by the hair after several long moments. Elena's teeth snapped together next to his ear and in the blink of an eye he reversed their positions, continuing to roll them until she was sprawled beneath him on her belly.

Damon knelt between her open thighs and took her by the hips, dragging her backward and onto her knees. After a moment's maneuvering, he thrust into the welcome grip of her wet heat and reached around to find her clit, his touch rougher than usual.

"Damon!" she all but screamed, once, then twice, pushing back to meet his heavy thrusts with inhuman force. The slap he gave her ass rang loudly through the room.

He kept a steady rhythm, the snap of his hips nearly brutal. When he pulled out of her, she didn't hesitate before flipping herself over in a blurred movement too fast for his eye to follow. Elena reached up to grab his face with both hands and pull him down to her, and the kiss was pure fire the moment their mouths met, urgent and demanding, endless.

Braced on his forearms, Damon fought her for control of the kiss, tasting blood as he sliced his tongue on a fang, and both of them moaned as he settled between her thighs. He ground himself against her and Elena slid a hand between their sweat-soaked bodies to grasp him tightly, lining him up, and then he was sliding inside her again.

Breaking the kiss, Damon leaned down and nudged her face to the side with his jaw. Directly into her ear, he repeated her own words back to her, giving her the warning she'd given him. "I'm going to bite you," he said, and she inhaled sharply, arching, drawing her legs higher along his sides, her heels digging into him harder than a human could take.

Damon followed words with action, thrusting deeply as he sank his fangs into her neck, drawing in a mouthful of her blood. Elena clenched tightly around his cock as she fell apart beneath him, her guttural cry of pleasure calling to something deep within him. He held her there, his teeth in her throat as he came.

Long moments later, he carefully withdrew from her body and collapsed beside her, rolling onto his back. He lifted an arm to tuck behind his head and stretched out, feeling fatigue roll through him as he came down from his euphoric high. Glancing over at her, he watched an odd expression flit across her face as she surveyed the mess they'd made of his bed, idly wiping at her mouth and chin with a corner of the sheet.

It was a look far too close to embarrassment for Damon's liking.

Concerned, he turned on his side, bracing himself on an elbow. "We're vampires, Elena," he reminded her, voice firm yet gentle. "You're a _vampire_. Don't be ashamed of yourself when you fuck like one."

Elena shook her head. "I'm not ashamed, that's not it."

Damon raised an eyebrow skeptically, not at all convinced, and she sighed. "It's just . . . sometimes I don't even recognize myself anymore."

"You're still you, Elena. Just enhanced. Elena 2.0. Or 3.0, since you died that one time before? 2.5, _whatever_," he said, with an airy wave of his hand. "The point is, you may be the Special Features edition now, but you're still Elena Gilbert."

"This version of Elena has all these strange urges and desires, all the time. It's hard for me to tell what's me and what's vampire. I know I need to find a balance."

"It'll take some time, that's all." Hopefully not a century or so, but she probably didn't want to hear that right then. "You're just overwhelmed by pretty much everything in your life right now. "

Elena contemplated the ceiling of his bedroom for a moment as if searching for courage. "Is that why you haven't asked me any questions?"

"You mean, like, 'What's going on between us?' or 'What in the hell do you feel for me, you devil woman-child?'"

A smiled tugged at one corner of her mouth and she met his eyes. "Something like that, yes."

"Would you have any answers for me, if I asked you any questions?"

"Damon . . ."

She didn't say anything else, like he'd known she wouldn't, but to her credit she held his gaze.

"Look, the last few times I demanded a straight answer from you, Elena, it didn't work out so well for me," Damon said, trying and mostly succeeding to keep his voice relatively light. "I'm not going to push you."

At that, Elena tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Are you sure I didn't take too much blood? You don't sound like yourself."

Damon gave her a look and tried to think of something supportive to say, something about how he could be patient and that he'd totally be there for her for whatever she needed. _ Interpersonal social skills are for pussies, _he thought, but he tried his best, anyway.

"Like you just said, you don't feel like yourself, you're not sure what's true and what's not, blah blah blah. I'll wait until you know up from down," he told her. "In the meantime, we'll just keep being bite-you buddies who have plenty of sex. We can deal with all the other shit when you're ready."

She opened her mouth to speak but he cut her off with a finger to her lips. "Let's get some sleep," he said, effectively ending the conversation. Personal growth and caring only took him so far.

Damon sat up just long enough to grab the comforter from the foot of the bed, and he pulled it over them as she turned on her side, facing away from him. She switched her pillow out for another one, a sleepy yawn escaping her.

"Could you set an alarm?" she asked. "My phone is all the way over there somewhere."

Momentarily baffled, Damon asked, "Why?"

"Because I've got school in the morning . . .?"

With an overly dramatic sigh, Damon reached for his phone and grabbed it off the nightstand. He pressed the Home button and the display lit up, and he swiped the pad of his thumb across the screen to unlock it. As he set an alarm to wake them in two hours' time, he idly wondered how pissed she'd be if he took a picture of her as she was right then: curled up in the middle of his bed, smooth skin smudged with a few small streaks of blood, her hair a goddamn disaster.

If he had such an image of her, he might even be bothered to learn how to set a contact picture.

"What are you laughing at, Salvatore?"

Damon set the phone back down and switched off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. "Nothing," he fibbed, and wrapped his arm around her waist to pull her close. "I just forget how young you are sometimes. Do I need to pack you a lunch in the morning, little girl? Drive you to school? Pick you up at three so we can share a milkshake at the Grill?"

"That would be lovely, Damon, how very thoughtful of you. Are you sure you can manage it, though? What with your _busy_ schedule and all," she snarked. Elena shifted a little in his arms, settling deeper down into the mattress. "I wouldn't want to interfere with any day drinking, clock-winding or house cleaning you may have had planned for your day."

Damon tweaked one of her nipples in response, hard enough for her to suck in a startled breath. "Smartass. Laugh all you want but I'll have you know, I've got _at least_ two loads of laundry ahead of me this morning," he said, soothing the hurt with a few gentle twists and tugs. "These sheets won't wash themselves."


End file.
